On
March 28 Wired.comreportedly received
an unbelievable email claiming that a tipster had obtained a
misplaced fourth generation iPhone. According to the site, they
entered a brief discussion about coverage on the device. The
discussion quickly terminated though when the source start hinting he
wanted money. Wired declined
to buy possibly stolen property and thus walked away from the year's
biggest tech scoop.

Gizmodo on
the other hand had took
the bait. Now, not long after police raided the home of a
Gizmodo editor,
police reportedly have located the seller as well.

A source
close to the transaction is quoted by Wired.com as
claiming that the seller made an earnest effort to return the phone
to Apple. They claim they tried to contact Apple and searched
for the iPhone user on Facebook, but couldn't find them.

They
claim the $5,000 "sale" described by Gizmodo was
really merely for an exclusivity agreement, not the sale of the
actual device. Describes the source, "The idea wasn’t to
find out who was going to pay the most, it was, Who’s going to
confirm this?"

The finder is reportedly a college-aged
Silicon Valley man.

If the search
warrant against Chen is any indication, the man may soon
face criminal charges. Police obviously aren't buying the
exclusivity fee claim, particularly after Gizmodo admitted
in writing to buying the phone and numerous staffers at the site
commented on the device's purchase, including site owner and Gawker
President Nick Denton.

The police reason that if the finder
wanted to return the phone, why didn't he just turn it in to police?
That, after all, is the legal approach if you discover something
valuable that didn't belong to you.

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I agree. The first, easiest, and most practical approach when finding any stray item is to hand it over the owners, manager, waitress, etc... I'm guessing 99% of the time the owner is going to come back and ask about their errant property. Lets give "finder" the benefit of the doubt, say he didn't' trust the bartender to not pocket the phone, and he did call Apple. Apple gives the guy the runaround, so the next step is to hand it over to the authorities. If the finder doesn't trust the cops, he could always ship it back to Cupertino himself for about 5 bucks. My point is that there were many options available to the guy before going to the press. I honestly feel he knew the importance of the prototype, attempted a half-hearted effort to return it to Apple, and then immediately went looking to get paid.